


thrill me like you do

by thimble



Series: la Bête [2]
Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Psychological Trauma, Q the fandom bicycle, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:19:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Silva has a funny idea of what constitutes a serenade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thrill me like you do

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's a series now. Completely self-indulgent, basically I'm having fun coming up with new and inventive ways to torture Q. No biggie.

Mr. Silva tires of the water after some time. Says he's not overtly fond of the way it speckles his suit, or dulls the shine on his shoes when it splashes. 

He did try not to struggle so hard, but it was proving a bit difficult near the end. He's certain his lungs must have shrunk in capacity even if the exercises were for the other way around. He swims in his sleep towards a fading light, a sun slowly swallowed by greenish murk, his limbs jutting out awkwardly in strange positions that make his joints ache when he wakes up. He hasn't seen a mirror in a while, but he wouldn't be surprised to find that his lips have turned pale blue.

He does hate to disappoint.

Mr. Silva only pats his cheek, then smacks a loud kiss upon it like a slap. "Still so weak," Mr. Silva tuts. "So very weak. We'll fix that."

Silence is no longer his weapon. Mr. Silva turns it into something precious as easily as he crafted an enemy out of it. He gets his own room with a bed and a desk, and he's given clean clothes, fed three times a day. 

"How would you know you've been good," Mr. Silva tells him, "if you aren't rewarded?"

That said, he's only given green tea. His least favourite.

("You have to earn it.")

There's paper on his desk, mounds of it. A quill too, and an inkwell, like he's a 17th century poet, though he's rubbish at writing anything that isn't code. Mr. Silva knows it too. Mr. Silva has an eccentric sense of humour. 

Still, it's better than counting cracks in the ceiling, or the seconds before he's permitted to breathe again. It's alarming. He's not sure what to put down at first. He attempts to pen letters to friends and family, but anything he recounts of his stay here will only distress them. There's no need for that. He's done a fine job of getting himself into trouble. His punishment is that he can't turn into someone else.

He settles for things he can remember. The manual for the first television set he disassembled and put together again. The first act of Hamlet, which bores him before completion. Poetry can be so terribly exhausting. He doesn't leak information, of course not; he's still got his wits about him. It wouldn't matter either way, because the men don't read his papers when they bring him food and ink, barely even glance at them. Mr. Silva chats with him, sitting from across the bed. Mr. Silva has a sunny smile.

It's almost normal.

He spends his days writing, and the weariness of his knuckles offer a little comfort, a little familiarity, which is nice. He waits for something to happen, nearly talks himself into believing nothing would. He won't say no to a welcome dose of monotony.

It doesn't last long, naturally. Around three o'clock, with the afternoon leaking into his windows, he hears a song. He glances up, gripping the quill a little harsher than necessary, waiting for someone to knock his door down and take him away from his rendering of London cab routes. He won't appreciate that at all.

No one comes. It's just the song, he realizes, playing from speakers installed in every corner of his room. He never noticed them before. Highly uncharacteristic. There's no reason he has to. It's just a song. 

It loops for an hour, then quiets again at four o'clock. He goes back to his papers.

The next day, it plays again. And again, and again, until eventually his shoulders lose their initial tension, and he learns to ignore it. Harmless, apart from the way it makes him sing to himself before he can catch it. Mr. Silva remarks that he has a wonderful voice, but it's embarrassing nonetheless. It's not distracting, once he retains his focus. He's working on Chaucer now, but the language is tricky. He likes a challenge.

He doesn't expect it. 

A minute into the song, something is slipped under his door. It jettisons about two feet away, so he stands, walks over to pick it up. An envelope, nondescript. He doesn't suspect that it's booby-trapped because there isn't a point. 

Mr. Silva _always_ has a point.

It's not sealed, so flicking it open is easy, and taking the content out is easy too. It's a photograph. He squints through his one good lens, though he's used to the world being a bit blurred around him. He can't quite make it out. It takes him a good five seconds, then he jerks back and regurgitates the sandwich he was given for lunch.

It plays on.

They come in at precisely four o'clock to clean up his mess, just as the song shuts off. He's at the desk, fingers shaking as he tries not to crush the quill between them. They replace his sandwich. He doesn't touch it.

That night, he moves to the bed. Mr. Silva enters at some point and sits next to him, respects his need for silence. Mr. Silva sweeps his palm over his forehead, an old habit, and he leans into the touch. He dreams in blood splatters and erratically plucked guitars.

Everyday the song comes on dutifully, a friend that stays with him for an hour before going to do other things. A friend who won't leave him alone. He just wants to be alone. This friend doesn't always bring an envelope with it, but they only arrive within three and four o'clock. Just as he thinks he can predict them, exactly seven days apart, a new one is delivered to throw off the pattern. Mr. Silva is adamant that each one comes as a surprise.

He stops throwing up, eventually. For a little while. Until he opens the twelfth envelope and it's something creative, _new_. He hasn't seen it before. Just as he had gotten the taste of stomach acid and rotten tuna out of his mouth.

Mr. Silva pushes his lips against his when he visits, feather-soft. He recoils, ashamed of his breath, but Mr. Silva's grip on his arms is vice-like.

"I can assure you, dear boy, you are a marginally more delectable than spearmint toothpaste." Mr. Silva licks at him, laughs as he laps at the insides of his cheeks while holding him down. 

The envelopes and the song go hand in hand now. Once he finds himself recreating them on his papers and he stares, stricken, before knocking over the inkwell. He stains the table and his hands black, then his cheeks when he tried to mop up the tears. Mr. Silva calls him a chimney sweep, affectionately.

He forgets what it's like to feel anything other than dread.

When he receives an envelope with contents that resemble his mother and father, he breaks. Mr. Silva enters minutes later, during the chorus, and picks him up from the floor.

('Orphans make the best recruits,' was their family motto.)

"Please," he says, not knowing why. Mr. Silva sighs, an arm secured around his stalk-thin waist, clutching one of his hands in a mock ballroom stance. Mr. Silva starts to waltz in impeccably measured steps, taking him along for the ride. Mr. Silva doesn't seem to mind that he has two left feet.

"Nineteen fifty five," Mr. Silva breathes, a warm tremble against his neck. "A good year for pop music, no?"

He thinks of the butterfly cuts on the body in the first photograph. It looked like the first boy he kissed in preparatory school. They still email each other every Christmas. The second one could have been twins with his favourite teacher, a kindly lady who introduced him to Wilde. The third, the only friend he made at his first proper job for a small software company. The corpse had hair the exact shade of red as hers.

Mr. Silva twirls him, snivelling marionette that he is at that moment. "Ringo Starr recorded his own version. I want him _flayed_ for it. Perhaps, one of these days..."

They were people he never realised he still cared for. Out of his life, but still very much alive. Then the twelfth came, a woman with dark skin and darker curls, hung upside down and drained like cattle. _Eve._

A boy, scalped, with the same aquiline nose as the newest recruit in his department. A businessman with his suit yanked open to show the dissected remains of his chest, a blue shirt and round face like Tanner. The man even has his set frown. Then there's one that looks barely human, or the most human, maybe, stripped down to the essentials. His skin was peeled and carved like a meticulous flower, and the lack of eyelids display his brilliant, vacant blue eyes. No need to guess who that one is supposed to be.

Mr. Silva starts to sing along in Cantonese. He's got a deep baritone but a lovely falsetto. Q feels like retching, but he liked his meal that day. Instead he shudders to think of all the people he never thought he could lose. 

He surrenders all his weight on Mr. Silva, tired of crying or waltzing or fighting. No more. Mr. Silva stops dancing, and seems to be the only thing keeping him from melting into the ground. There's a sigh that sounds almost happy.

"England would look so pretty on her knees," Mr. Silva swoons, conspiratorial. He's pleased, and it's obvious, because he adopts a more reassuring tone. "But not as much as you."

He stops hearing the song in the afternoon (finally), but when Mr. Silva rewards him with a computer ( _finally_ ), he taps on the keys like a metronome, to a 6/8 time signature.

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://a.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx9ehdshAi1qke3bko1.mp3) is the song referred to in the story, whose lyrics I took the title from, and what I had playing incessantly for the two days I worked on this. The effect it had on my psyche is more or less the same.


End file.
